The Oral Talmud: Episode 17 - The Iranian Talmud with Shai Secunda
SHOW NOTES
“I love the world of the Talmud. I love the fact that they need to justify, they wanna justify, they wanna talk and talk and talk; the way that people who are less socially confident sometimes find themselves doing, when we're in a situation where we're in a new community, and we just, you know, ramble! That's something I love about the Talmud.” - Shai Secunda
Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today.
This week Dan & Benay learn with special guest scholar Shai Secunda! Shai Secunda is Jacob Neusner Professor in the History and Theology of Judaism at Bard College. He received a bachelor’s degree from Ner Israel Rabbinical College, a master’s from Johns Hopkins University, and an MA/PhD from Yeshiva University. He is the author of “The Iranian Talmud: Reading the Talmud in its Sasanian Context” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) and “The Talmud’s Red Fence: Menstruation and Difference in Babylonian Judaism and its Sasanian Context” (Oxford University Press, 2020).
What are some aspects of the geopolitical context in which the Talmud was formed? What was it about the time, space, and culture where the Rabbis lived that led them to construct the Gemara, its winding justifications and responses to the rarely justified radical changes of the Mishnah? How granular can we get into eras of the Talmudic period? Was anyone else doing what the Rabbis were? How do we navigate difficult gaps in evidence?
Access the full Sefaria Source Sheet for additional show notes. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com/donate.
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DAN LIBENSON: This is The Oral Talmud - Episode 17: The Iranian Talmud with Shai Secunda. Welcome to The Oral Talmud, a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. I’m Dan Libenson…
BENAY LAPPE: …and I’m Benay Lappe.
DAN LIBENSON: The Oral Talmud is our weekly deep dive study partnership, in which we try to figure out how voices from the Talmud – voices from 1500 to 2000 years ago – can help us think in new ways about Judaism today.
Today’s episode features our fifth guest, author and scholar Shai Secunda! Shai Secunda is Jacob Neusner Professor in the History and Theology of Judaism at Bard College. He received a bachelor’s degree from Ner Israel Rabbinical College, a master’s from Johns Hopkins University, and an MA/PhD from Yeshiva University. He is the author of “The Iranian Talmud: Reading the Talmud in its Sasanian Context” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) and “The Talmud’s Red Fence: Menstruation and Difference in Babylonian Judaism and its Sasanian Context” (Oxford University Press, 2020).
Especially for this episode, remember that each conversation on The Oral Talmud has a Source Sheet linked in the show notes on a web site called Sefaria where you can find pretty much any Jewish text in the original and in translation. If you wish, you can follow along with the texts we discuss and share them with your study partners or just listen to our conversation! Shai recommends a number of scholars and curious pieces of historical evidence for expanding our understanding of the geopolitical position of the Talmud’s formation, and we want you to be able to follow us down the rabbit holes!
And now, The Oral Talmud…
DAN LIBENSON: Today we are thrilled to have a guest. Professor Shai Secunda is the Jacob Neusner Professor in the History and Theology of Judaism at Bard College. And, uh, our main topic of conversation today relates to, uh, his book, which is called the “Iranian Talmud,” which I've got a copy of right here. “Reading the Bavli in its Sasanian Context.” I think a lot of people won't know what Sasanian context is, but we'll talk about that in in a second. So first of all, uh, Benay great to see you again. And, and Shai welcome. It's great to have you.
BENAY LAPPE: Good to be here. So, so, uh, I just wanna say welcome and it's such an honor, uh, to have this chance to talk Talmud with you.
So thank you. And I'm so excited.
SHAI SECUNDA: So thanks for having me.
DAN LIBENSON: So let's just jump right in. I we're Benay and I have been really excited to have this conversation with you and, and, and ultimately with other people that are looking at this sort of as historians and, and really kind of like understanding the context within the Talmud within which the Talmud was, was written, was composed, you know, a lot of times, and, and I think Judaism very consciously, often looks at text this way. Like, that doesn't matter, you know, this is one, this is a whole, this is, we don't, this is out of, out of time. Uh, but, but clearly I think in, in, in academic scholarship, we tend not to, not to agree with that.
Um, I, I was wondering if you could just start a little bit with, with just a little bit of, um. Just some, some historical or some some geographic grounding. If, if we could a little bit just to understand when, when we, I think when people who kind of know the, the map of the Near East think of Babylonia or Mesopotamia, they tend to think of what we call today Iraq, but, but what your book is about and, and, and it is very much about its context as Iranian or what we think of as Persian. And so could you talk a little bit about what was,
what was the geopolitical landscape at, at that time and what was going on?
And I'm also curious, just a, a side question about that. Was the Jewish population of, of Babylonia, do we know what its relationship was with the, the Jewish exiles from the first temple? Or you know, is there a community that was there for a long time or is this sort of people that came much, much later?
SHAI SECUNDA: Sure. So the geographic question, um, is a great, great place to start. The Talmud, or at least the Rabbinic project, um, of the Talmud knows of itself as a Babylonian project. Um, and actually what you said initially is correct, Babylonia is geographically Iraq.
If we wanna position ourselves in another way, um, we could say that it's in Mesopotamia, a Greek word meeting, uh, the land between the rivers and those two rivers are the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers. Two really, you know, exceedingly important, uh, rivers from antiquity, uh, until, uh, today.
So geographically, they're, you know, we're in Iraq. Um, but politically, uh, culturally, um, we are under, uh, Persian influence. And in fact, uh, we are at the very center of a Persian empire. Uh, so let me kind of back up and talk about the geopolitical reality, uh, especially as it has to do with. The rabbis who were creating, um, rabbinic literature, including the Talmud.
So there are two main centers, uh, of rabbinic learning. Uh, I'm sure you've spoken quite a bit of this podcast about, uh, the, the rabbinic community in the land of Israel, uh, and particularly in the Galilee. Uh, and that sort of foundational, we could say rabbinic community, uh, which present itself as rabbinic even before the Babylonian rabbinic community, um, is under, is in a different political context, is in Roman Palestine.
Um, which, uh, from really the second century and on, uh, was located almost entirely in the Galilee with some, um, some rabbinic, uh, action, uh, in further southern, uh, and southwestern uh, areas. Um, the other major rabbinic center, of course, is in Babylonia. And as we said in Iraq between, uh, mainly between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers.
And there we are talking about a different, uh, political, I should even say imperial context. So if the Galilee was under Roman Palestinian, uh, Roman, uh, rule, I should say. So, um, Babylonia was under, uh, Persian, uh, rule. And in fact, um, many ways of thinking about this part of the world during lit antiquity is of, um, a clash or at least two poles of imperial power Later.
Uh, this was described as the two eyes, that sort of imperial eyes that gaze out at the world, one being centered, uh, in the Roman Empire and the other in, uh, the Persian Empire.
Now Persia, uh, as many, many of you, uh, of listeners and, and people know, uh, is not in Iraq, um, is in fact further east. And actually historic Persia is, is what we would call southwestern Iran. So the Persian Gulf, uh, is an area known as a Fars. Um, and a, uh, dynasty began in that region. Um, it, they sort of made some gains at the beginning of the third century. Uh, and then by the time we reached the 220s and in particular 224, uh, they actually rise to power. They displaced the Parthians, which had been the previous dominant, uh, Iranian, uh, dynasty.
And they become the main, um, that other eye right that's looking out at this part of late antiquity. Um, they are centered, uh. To a certain extent in Babylonia, uh, they have their winter capital, or at least they're based in, in, you know, the, the colder months of the year, uh, is in, um, a, a town known as Ctesiphon, which included, uh, areas we might think of them as suburbs, or even kinda to use modern terminology, part of the metroplex of towns like Mechoza. Uh, these are places where, uh, important rabbis, perhaps even one of the most important, uh, Talmudic rabbis, Rava, uh, called his his home.
So just to kind of reiterate, we are geographically in, um, in Iraq, but we are politically, um, imperially, uh, under, uh, under Persian rule.
DAN LIBENSON: And just, just one quick, so is it right to say that in a way that like, uh, Constantinople became the capital of the Roman Empire, that this area, even though it's not in Persian, so for some reason they moved their capital to what we think of as Iraq. And why was that?
And also, I just wanna remind you of the question about like, who are the Jews that are there? Were they from the 1st Temple Exile?
SHAI SECUNDA: Yeah. So, um, in a, in a sense this was a natural place even for, um, Persians, uh, to establish a new Persian dynasty. I don't think I mentioned their name, but it is in the title of my book that you referred to, which is the Sasanian Dynasty. So this was actually a natural place, uh, for an Iranian dynasty to establish, uh, a capital.
Um, I should actually be a little more specific about the terminology I'm using. So I mentioned how Persia, um, in a certain sense has a more limited circumscribed geographic sense. Um, you know, purely it refers to southwestern Iran, uh, the area of the Persian Gulf, um, and.
At least in the languages and, and the terminology of late antiquity of the Talmudic period, Iran has a much more expansive sense. Um, so Iran would include Persians, it would also include Parthians. These are people who come from areas to the northeast, uh, of, of Persia, of, of forests. So already the Parthians had established, um, an imperial presence, uh, in fact in that same area. Uh, um, and, and this even goes back to the dynasty before the Parthian dynasty, uh, which was not in fact an Iranian dynasty, but was the Seleucids. Um, they had established a town actually called Seleucia uh, which was really a sister city, a twin city, we could think of it, uh, from Ctesiphon. It was just across the river. Um, so for that reason, this would be a natural place. Um, for this new Persian dynasty, and this is so, and Dynasty to establish itself.
Iraq has many things going for it, not just sunshine and good dates, which the rabbis, uh, like, like to extol. Uh, but, but especially it's the bread basket of, of the whole region. So in order to, you know, be able to fund, uh, your economy, your wars, everything that, uh, empires like to do, you need to have a place, uh, like, uh, Iraq and in fact like this area between rivers that is very fertile, um, and very productive.
About your question regarding, um, uh, the relationship between the Jews who had been exiled, um, at the end of the first temple, uh, period. Uh, what relationship is between them, uh, and the rabbis? Uh, who, um. Who, who, who were part of the process of forming the Babylonian Talmud. This is one of the great historical mysteries.
We do know both from the Bible, but also from, um, recently discovered and studied evidence, uh, that Jews had already, um, been living in this region in Mesopotamia from the sixth century before the common era.
We have tablets, um, that, um, refer to a place that translates as Jew Town Al-Yahudu, um mm-hmm. Where, um, we have names of people who have, um, Judean or, or Israelite names. And they're doing the kinds of things that people do. They're buying and selling things. Uh, they're having families. Um, so we know we have, you know, documentary evidence.
We have, uh, textual biblical evidence, uh, that Jews have been living, uh, in this area from the sixth century before the common era.
We then hear about, uh, these Jews, um, in various, uh, sources so much later in the first century. Uh, we hear from the great historian of, uh, Jo Josephus, uh, of, um, Mesopotamian Jews. Um, we hear about it in other kind of Greek Jewish writers like Philo, um, that they were Jews in this region,
but we don't really know what the relationship was between the Jews who had listened to Jeremiah's, uh, advice, you know, to plant vineyards and to establish themselves way back in the sixth century before the common era.
Uh, and this. Seemingly new, um, kind of community, a rabbinic for the region, at least a rabbinic community that really gets going at the beginning of the third century. Interestingly enough, when that dynasty, the Sasanian Dynasty establishes itself, it's possible that some of the, um, these Babylonian rabbis, uh, had deep historic roots in the region.
Uh, but there's also plenty of evidence that, that some of them, maybe even most of them, were, uh, emigres from the Galilee, uh, and had moved, uh, to Babylonia, perhaps because of persecution, uh, in the 130ss, uh, the Hadrianic Persecutions, perhaps because of economic, uh, opportunities. Uh, but regardless, we know that Jews were there for a long time, for a very long time.
We know that some of the rabbis, uh, who call themselves Babylonian rabbis started, uh, in Palestine, but we don't really know exactly what the relationship is between this Babylonian rabbinic community and the um, uh, and the Babylonian juice have been living there for so long.
BENAY LAPPE: When do I get to ask my big question? Is it now?
DAN LIBENSON: your big question or..
BENAY LAPPE: what, what did you, did you have a follow up?
DAN LIBENSON: No, but I no - go ahead.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. At the risk of jumping in too soon with my big question, here's my big question, and it's a question that Dan and I have surfaced over the years. Even the most beginning learner of Talmud can feel the difference between the, the personality of the Mishna and the Gemara.
And the mishna, it, it just seems like such a baldly radical text. It, it deviates significantly often from the Torah and doesn't seem to need to justify or explain itself for, for having done so. It just says, you know, Torah says we should do this. We're doing the opposite - done!
And then you get suddenly to the Gemara, and I know it seems sudden because it's just, you know, a half an inch further away. But of course it's some 500 years and another culture away. We have a text that, thanks to Shamma Friedman and David Weiss Halivni, who have pointed out the role of the Stama, the anonymous editor. We have a text that seems to be shaped by another time and another culture, um, which either has the agenda, it seems to bend over backwards to justify those radical deviations from the Torah. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. What the Mishna has said really is what the Torah always meant because of this verse and that verse and so on.
Or if you follow David Kraemer, who's my primary teacher, bends over backwards to, to show just how unjustified the mission is, deviation from the Torah is and emphasizes the rabbi's authority to make those radical deviations.
And possibly as I extend this further, is, is the stama this Iranian influenced editor trying to give us a manual, an instruction manual for how to radically upgrade the tradition when necessary.
So we are always wanting to know what was going on at the time of the anonymous editor or editors that made them have to do this, allowed them to do this, uh, or, or was influencing this different approach to the relationship between Torah and oral law.
SHAI SECUNDA: Okay. So that's a lot, a lot to, uh, chew on. Um, and I wanna, you know, first of all, acknowledge that I too am a student, um, of those important scholars such as Shamma Friedman, with whom I actually had the benefit of literally, uh, taking a, a course years ago at, uh. At, uh, um, ter, uh, in Jerusalem, uh, and David Weiss Halivni, we are all students of David Weiss Halivni. Um, I think you can see in the background some of his, uh, books “Mikraot, Misraot” right over here, “Sources and Traditions”, uh, where, uh, he emphasizes the difference between the anonymous layer, um, the Stama, uh, and uh, the earlier Amoraic, uh, statements.
That said, I don't think the, um, difference between the Talmud and the Mishna, which you so, um, uh, you capture so well is, um, only a difference between these later editors, uh, and these earlier rabbis. I think we already see. Really some of the earliest amora'im. But certainly once things get going, even those amora'im, uh, even those post mishnaic stages are struggling, uh, perhaps proudly pointing out, uh, perhaps sweating while they do it. Uh, this discrepancy between Mishna, um, and the apparent discrepancy between Mishnah and Torah.
So, I, I, I, at least the way I wanna think about this is that it's not only about the editors versus the Mishna, but it's about the whole Talmudic project versus, uh, versus the Mishna. Now, the Mishna certainly presents itself as this very confident, um, almost pristine text, uh, that occasionally will cite biblical precedent, but just starts, you know, talking.
I mean, I think the first mishna, uh, in, in shas, uh, and the gemara’s explanation of it is a perfect example. It assumes that, you know, this is at the beginning of tractate Berachot um, it assumes that, you know, that Jews, uh, are required to recite, uh, the Shema, uh, twice a day. Um, and it wants to know a detail, uh, about that. When exactly do you recite it?
This is typical of the Mishna just starting almost mid-sentence, assuming, um, that there is a, um, that there is a, a whole world of norms and expectations, not even justifying that there is in fact an obligation to recite this particular um, um, text. Right? If you look at the actual text of the Shema, there certainly is an emphasis, even an encouragement that one should speak words of Torah generally, uh, perhaps certain sections of Deuteronomy. Um, um, regularly.
Right. But the Bible is certainly not, uh, envisioning something that the, like, what the mission is describing, that we have a very discreet obligation to recite this specific text in a specific way at a specific time every day. That already is innovation. And yet the Mishnah doesn't justify it. It just starts talking.
And as students of Talmud know, even students who dropped out after the first page, they know that this bothers the Talmud tremendously. Right? The Talmud says, what is the tanna, what is the, uh, author reciter of this Mishna standing on? Right? To assume that we know that there's an obligation to assume all of these things, and it, right, as Benay and I described justifies how, um. You know how we got there, right? How we, we came to know, uh, about this obligation.
Um, so the problem is certainly there. I think it's an invigorating problem. Um, and the solution I think might have something to do, um, with shifts that took place historically, not only in Babylonia, but also also in Palestine, because soon after this text known as the Mishna comes out in the world and is apparently authorized in some sense because the rabbis really treated, um, even the relatively early rabbis treated with a certain amount of respect.
There's some kind of shift where, I don't wanna say that the amora’im lose their confidence, but that amora’im are no longer, um, willing to ignore this apparently radical departure from what's the Torah and what's, um. Uh, and, and, and, and what's happening in the Mishna. And for that reason, the amoraim are trying to explain and justify, um, what's happening in the mishna. And maybe as, as you quoted Kraemer, right, uh, David Kraemer, maybe that, that, um, that's about emphasizing and even underlining the authority that's given, uh, to the Mishna. Uh, to do this.
I wanna kind of add one more thing to think about is that the Mishnah as a text certainly presents itself as this very confident, um, work, um, which is in trying to justify its relationship with the Torah. However, it does come out of a world where there are other texts, um, both before it, uh, and alongside it. Uh, that give you a, a sense that, you know, as much as this confident text that walks into the bar, so to speak, uh, seems very confident and seems like it doesn't need to justify things. In fact, we know that other Jews, um. were writing things and had written things of vary with varying degrees of justification and even rabbis themselves. Uh, even apparently before the amoraim and the tmu, the, the Talmudic project felt this need.
So, for example, we have, um, early versions of Midrash known as Midrashai Halakhah - Halakhic Midrash, things like the Mekhilta or the Sifre, uh, uh, these are midrashim interested primarily in the halakhic sections of the Torah like Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy and these midrashim are fully engaged with the, the Bible. And not only that, they're trying to figure out often the relationship between rabbinic norms and assumptions, sometimes even lines in the Mishna or of text that became part of the Mishna and how to square that with, um, with the Bible, right?
We also know that. Other Jewish groups, uh, apparently sectarian groups, uh, had written things sometimes that also struggled to understand the relationship between what the Bible seems to say and what, um, the norm is.
And they had various strategies. Sometimes it was about emphasizing a different form of authority, the authority of a righteous, almost prophetic teacher who was able to, you know, work his way through a text and even almost prophetically take things out. There are other things that they did a text, um, that also was found, uh, uh, that it's also sectarian was founded The Dead Sea Scrolls known as the Damascus document that has a little bit of that confidence, um, um, that, uh, we find in the Mishna. Um, and you know, there,
There's always a possibility of sort of problematizing, um, what exactly was happening during the period of the Mishna where that confidence might have come from and whether there really is a strict distinction between the Mishna and Talmud.
But that said, I fully agree with you. This is, uh, perhaps the key difference between Mishna and Talmud. We sometimes forget this. You, you look at a page of Talmud, um, and you know, Talmud and the common parlance nowadays means both the mishna, right? Those little blocks of text and the Gemara, um, which interprets it. You might wanna read it seamlessly, uh, but in fact there's something radically different, uh, that's happening.
I don't know if it's appropriate, you know, to, um, think in these terms about what I like more and what I like less in the Rabbinic tradition. But we all have our aesthetic preferences, and I love the world of the Talmud. I love the fact that they need to justify, they wanna justify, they wanna talk and talk and talk the way that, um, people who are less socially confident sometimes find themselves doing, you know, when we're in a situation, uh, where we're in a new community, uh, and we just, you know, ramble, that's something I love about the Talmud.
Um, the Mishna seems to me like the cool kid, um, you know, who walks into the room and, and doesn't feel the need to justify and there's a place for those cool kids. But I do have a certain partiality to that, to the Talmud.
BENAY LAPPE: I, I love your, your phrase less socially confident and it, that's really interesting to me.
And again, as a student of Kraemer, are they less socially confident or is it possible that they're more socially confident and really showing you how little they need to justify by making farfetched Uh, you know, really forced justifications to show you just how farfetched, uh, they are. But important for selling their innovation to others.
I don't know. I'm not sure, but I love that question. There's something that resonates really true for me as a queer woman outsider. You know, I know what it feels like to feel less socially confident in how my learning and my teaching and what I see, um, and, and how I wanted to learn and master the text and came out of that experience.
SHAI SECUNDA: So that's really interesting. Yeah. That's beautiful.
DAN LIBENSON: So I'd love to, to go deep into this question of, you know, well what does it matter that this is happening in Iran in the, under the Persians? And, and also to sort of take that question as, it's not like a simple question.
It's like, it's like saying, what, what would be happening to American Judaism? Well, it's like, that's been a long time. Yeah. Are we talking about the colonial period? Are we talking about the Civil War period? Are we talking about, you know, the sixties? You know, what are we, and, and, and so, you know, so I guess there's also a question embedded into that is like, is it, is worth asking too much about the Talmud from, you know, in terms of the years 200 until, you know, four 50. Or is it actually only really interesting to be asking about 450 to 600 or whatever the, you know, the period that would be the kind of, you know, editorial period.
Um, and, you know, and I guess I'm specifically, I mean, I'm wondering about things that relate to what we were talking about, what Benay was just talking about, like the level of confidence. Like you sort of think about it as like, well, a new immigrant is one kind of person and somebody who's been there for 400 years is a different kind of person. Both in terms of confidence, but also in terms of maybe how influenced they've been by the society or maybe how not influenced they've been by the society.
Because it's like the Haredim, you know, the ultra orthodox in Borough Park, you know, like the longer they remain, you know, less influenced by the society, like the more, the more special maybe they, they feel, you know.
So I, I guess I'm wondering like all of those different forces, like what, and, and also like what can we say, like what are the important things that we really can say, whether it's about that, that period at the end of, of the editorial period or, or other periods in terms of the way in which we should really be looking at some of what's in the Talmud as important relating to that Persian context in which the, the Jews are living.
SHAI SECUNDA: Yeah. So where do I begin? I mean, the, the historic, you know, if, if we could ask questions like we can about American history or American Jewish history about specific decades or years, then we would love to. Um, the problem is, uh, that we often are forced to think about this long period, right?
The Talmudic period, um, as one thing because of our sources, and I mean both our Jewish sources, uh, and our, um, non-Jewish sources. Right. So, you know, we've all been, I assume your listeners know about, um, these ideas that we've been talking about in terms of the editors. And the editorial stage, um, compared with the, the named Rabbis, um, and the differences that might have existed.
But at the end of the day, the Talmud that we have, that we study, um, that we cherish, um, is a finished product of some sort. And it's very hard to go back and see the parts that ultimately became part of the Talmud, um, the, the, the entire Talmud, right? Sometimes we will find a very old manuscript or even a fragment of a manuscript, um, in the chia, for example, which will give us a little window, uh, into a slightly different text, a slightly different world.
But even those texts won't really take us back, uh, earlier than probably earliest the eighth century. Um, and, and we're left with largely a kind of finished project. Um. At which point we need to ask ourselves, can we still truly separate between the earlier sources, right? And that final product that we hold in our hands, right?
So can we, you know, study the decades? Can we say, um, well, I can tell you what was happening to Jews in the 220s when Rav and Schmuel, these great foundational amoraim were teaching and studying, uh, in Babylonia. And I can look at what they're saying and what's happening, uh, in other, in other texts. Um, but everything is going to be somehow through the prism of this final product that we hold, hold.
To what extent did those later editors tamper with or rework, uh, or mess with, um, those earlier statements, those earlier traditions? That's the million dollar question. And that really does make it difficult to get down to any sort of specific specificity when it comes to our Jewish sources. Um, to a certain extent we have a, it's not the same kind of problem, but it's, it compounds this problem when it comes to our sources, um, that are non, non Talmudic.
Um, we have very few sources, certainly when we compare them to the kind of sources that we have in the Rabbinic Galilee. We have very few sources, um, that we can pinpoint, uh, and point to and say, this will tell us something specific about Jews in a certain place in Babylonia at a certain time. In fact, we have relatively, we, we essentially have no, we know such sources that can give us a place and a date, uh, that's directly relevant for Jews.
We have Aramaic Incantation Bowls, um, which were written, uh, many of them by Jews, which were, were written for Jews. And sometimes on rare occasions they give us a date. They, they're found at a certain level of, um, an archeological, uh, dig. Um, though most of them are non-provenanced. Um. Or at a very rare occasion, they will even name a date, uh, often, uh, a late date, you know, a post Talmudic, uh, date.
Uh, but other than that, we don't really have sources that will talk specifically about Jews in a specific place at a specific time. All of our evidence, whether it comes from, uh, middle Persian inscriptions - that's the language that was used by the empire - uh, or, um, other sorts of sources by various historians, whether they're writing Greek or Arabic, uh, Islamic historians that are using earlier Persian sources will tell us very little that can give us a sort of granular, this is what was happening at a specific decade to this specific Jewish community.
But that said, right, we're still, um, able to do the best we can. Kinda read for trends to compare when it comes to the Jewish sources. What happens in the Babylonian Talmud and what happens in the Palestinian Talmud? Um, what kinds of changes appear there? Um, there are, you know, some sources, extant sources that will also give us, uh, a greater sense. But unfortunately we are forced to a certain extent, uh, to think about the Sasanian period, uh, as this one big hole. Not 'cause there wasn't change happening constantly, but just because the evidence, um, is, is very difficult to work with.
Now about your question, uh, you know, about, you know, and, and even the parallel perhaps with different communities that were separated, uh, and be became more separated or more influenced, right? We might expect, uh, especially if we think that some of the Babylonian rabbis had come from the Galilee right, had moved to Babylonia many of them, uh, we would expect some kind of process to take place. Perhaps it would be growing influence. Uh, perhaps it would be, as you pointed out, just the opposite, um, you know, a reactionary, um, uh, reality, uh, that took place. And there are hints of at least this being contested, uh, at different points in Talmudic period.
So, um, that early, uh, foundational amora that I mentioned, Rav, seems to be rather, uh, concerned with, uh, influence. There are a few passages, uh, where he says things that imply that he, he's concerned. Uh, and I'll give one example this, um, for those studying Daf Yomi might be in your memory still. Uh,
it's a passage in Tractate Shabbat 75a, And Rab says that “anyone who studies with a magus right, a Zoroastrian priest, um, is liable the death penalty.” Some versions of this text in the manuscript. Even say any, I have a version where it's “anyone who studies a single word right is liable, uh, with, from a magus is liable to death penalty.” Now, that's a strange statement.
Uh, if you assume that Jews from the beginning at all times were, um, disconnected from the cultures and the religions that were, uh, alongside them, but if you assume as in fact is the reality even of, of course in Haredim Brooklyn, um, that there is, there are encounters, uh, constantly between Jews and others, then one can better appreciate what Rav is reacting to, uh, and perhaps even look behind his very severe statement.
And find evidence that in fact, Jews were learning and were studying with, um, Zoroastrian priests. And for that reason, Rav felt the need to react. Right. And we have other amoraim who also seemed to be agitated by this possibility. Rav Yosef is another one of them. Um, uh, about a, a century later.
And at the same time, we, we have examples of rabbis who seem much more comfortable interacting. At least that's how the texts present them, interacting with, uh, these others. So Rava, who I mentioned earlier, is presented in stories of talking with, um, the court, the Sasanian court. Which even if it's an imaginative process that Jews would say, well, we have a rabbi who has access to the, the court, specifically to the queen mother, Ifera Hurmiz/Hormizd interesting enough, it makes good geographic sense that someone, a rabbi who lives right alongside the Persian capital, uh, would be within the orbit, uh, uh, of, of the court. And he seems, um, he seems comfortable, he seems, um, interested even in talking with various figures, uh, in, in this world.
So we get a little bit of a push and a pull sometimes we're able to kind of get a sense of stratification. There is some evidence that the stam, interestingly enough, seems more disconnected, uh, at times. Uh, so one example would be, uh, some sources that, uh, refer to King Shapur. There were in fact two important King Shapurs, uh, one at the beginning of the dynasty in the third century and the other a century later. Um, for much of the fourth century, he started young and he reigned for a long time. We have a couple of, uh, passages in the Talmud that attribute seemingly halachic statements, or at least interest in halakhic discourse to this king, um, which is interesting and surprising.
The stam, the anonymous layer, uh, when this occurs, says, oh, Shapur, that's just a nickname of either Shmuel, uh, or Rava. The stam is sort of unable to imagine a world, um, where, um, you know, a, a Sasanian king would take interest in Halahkic debate now that it could very well be, and almost certainly the case that historically the king never took any interest, uh, in, in such matters. However, earlier. Rabbis were able to, or at least wanted to imagine a world where the king would, would, would, uh, would be interested in the locking discourse. And later during the stammaitic period, this became unimaginable.
So that's one example of many where we can find some interesting distinctions about how Jews found themselves, uh, in, uh, relation to their neighbors and the empire at earlier periods and during the amoraic period and later, uh, periods when the Talmud was redacted.
BENAY LAPPE: I feel a little bit like a dog with a bone, but I'm still not wanting to give up on knowing some things about the time period in Iran, Persian Iran, that can help me understand the stamma better: the politics, the literature, you talk about the tradition of religious learning, and I'm wondering if the form that the Stama created was influenced by that. I, I'm still wanting to picture better what was going on around the stamma that I can maybe, you know, connect the dots from.
SHAI SECUNDA: Sure. So I understand. So I, I, I, I, I will fulfill this desire. I didn't mean to sort of discount the, you know, importance of, of the Stam and the Stams project. Not at all. So I, I, I'll say a couple of things.
Um, one is the most important at the end of the day, It is the stam that gives us the Talmud, the rabbis certainly were discussing, um, rabbinic things, the Mishna and allied texts. Um, they were even preserving them. They were memorizing these teachings. They were reciting them, but it's only the stam right? Which is a construct of course, but we have the Talmud because this process took, uh, took place and was crystallized. And I think that very process could be understood. In fact can only really be understood when we think about the context in which Babylonian Jews lived, at least at two accounts.
One is in order to, um, to create this massive text, almost 2 million words, you need institutions. Uh, and there's been a lot of interesting work, um, about the rise of rabbinic institutions, essentially what we call the yeshiva, right? Earlier, scholars assume that the Yeshivas existed forever because in a way, traditional Jews talk about Yeshivas existing, not only even before the Torah was given, but even before Abraham. Um, you know, Shem, uh, uh, Noah's son is, you know, uh, a co-founder of, of this great yeshiva called Shem v’Eber. Right.
And this is an important part of sort of rabbinic values to, to imagine because learning is so central that this is, has been with us, uh, since time immemorial. Even in terms of, um, you know, more critical scholars, it had been assumed that from the period of the Mishna or at least the amoraim, um, there were Yeshivas because there do seem to be references and stories told about various amoraim in Yeshivas.
However, uh, going back a few decades, um, um, a number of scholars, especially David Goodblatt, uh, and then, um, this was helped by others who sort of fine tuned his, his insight, realize that in fact all those stories, uh, that depict earlier rabbinic stages in Yeshivas were constructed later. Um, and in fact, if you do careful work, you find that earlier rabbis were organized in something like study circles, these small interlinking uh, networks.
And later, um, institutions began to grow, um, to the point where when we get to the post Talmudic period and the geonic period, we hear about these massive, um, impressive institutions, um, that, um, that really are kind of the foundation of Yeshivas, uh, until today.
Now, how did that happen? What, what sort of resources, um, what sort of changes, um, were necessary in order to that form of rabbinic institutionalization to take place?
And it seems that we, we don't have a clear solution to this, but there are, um, pieces of evidence that suggests that it wasn't only Jews who were undergoing through this kind of institutionalization, and in fact, um, uh, a a, uh, neighboring community in particular, Syriac Christians, these are sort of Eastern Christians, um, who made their home in Southern Empire were building similar institutions and we're going through similar processes.
So there are a number of scholars who work on, uh, the relationship between, um, the Talmud, uh, the Babylonian Jews and Christians, including Michal Bar-Asher Siegal, Simcha Gross, Yifat Monnickendam. You know, I've spoken with Simha, uh, recently, uh, about, you know, some of these ideas where particularly the institutions that we find growing amongst Syriac Christians, uh, may have a lot to teach us about the process with Jews, which then would give us, because we have these big institutional structures, the stam.
A second thing that I'll add to that, and this is, um, I don't wanna give too much away 'cause this is the theme of my, of my next book, um, which may be years away. So I might as well share something is that, um, I think another related process to what the Stam is doing, um, can be better understood if we look at, um, another community, which is the Zoroastrian community.
Um, and what I'll say is the stam, in the Bavli is not entirely unprecedented in, um, in rabbinic literature. Right. The Yerushalmi also has this kind of anonymous voice. It might, might be less activist, it might be less, um, um, interested in kind of highly sophisticated argumentation, um, which is a nice way of putting political argument. Uh, but it was already there at earlier stages, um, and in other places.
What distinguishes the stam and what distinguishes the Talmudic Project? Well, one of the things I think that truly distinguishes it is that Babylonian Jews seem to have only given us one gigantic text, one text that's trying to put everything in it. Right? Um, you know, people make fun of, uh, sort of talmudic tangents. I don't know if that's in the negative, uh, Oxford Dictionary, uh, definition – as if to say somehow that, you know, the rabbi's attention is always diverted and they, that they can't follow an argument because, you know, in the middle of a discussion about A, they'll talk about B and there'll be long, you know, sections about medicine. What does it have to do really with the mishna?
This is not, um, I think what's going on, what's going on is that specifically the stam, specifically the Bavli is interested in preserving, although it's a project to explain the Mishnah and early urban tradition, but is interested along the way in preserving as much of Jewish culture, of rabbinic culture as possible for future generations. And it wants to do that in one text, one C-like text is the medieval way of thinking of the Talmud.
We don't get that in the Galilee, right? We have all sorts of texts. We have the Yerushalmi, which is a similar parallel commentary, uh, on the Mishna, uh, from the Galilee, but we also have many Midrashim as separate books, uh, in, in Palestine. We have piyyut, which is being composed and preserved all. We have a whole bookshelf of different books.
In Babylonia we seem to only have one book and one ambitious book to kind of put everything in there using the structure. I think that is parallel to a massive and in fact imperial backed project that the Zoroastrians were engaged in. Zoroastrians and, uh, Zoroastrianism is a uh, ancient Iranian religion that has roots as far back as the second millennia before the come era and exists today. There are, um, Zoroastrians living, um, all over the world, especially in Iran, India, and a large, uh, diaspora, uh, in North America, Europe, and elsewhere. And, um, Zoroastrians, um, and
the Sasanians, I should say, were closely aligned with Zoroastrians. They were Zoroastrians themselves and they had various sorts of close connections with, uh, Zoroastrian priesthood. Um, and there is evidence that with Imperial backing, they too, were trying to create this one massive text that included all kinds of material. Like the rabbis. They were using the structure of an ancient text, right? The rabbis in Babylonia were using the Mishna with its orders and track dates. Uh, and the Zoroastrians were using their scripture known as the Avesta - and 0rganization, um, of it that, you know, has something like 21 orders and these smaller elements to then put all kinds of knowledge into one big packaging, which they refer to as the Dan, right? Um, which means something like the religion or the tradition.
So you know that this. Thought or this possibility is very preliminary and I'm still kind of working it out. But it seems to be that, you know, the latter matter which I described, and also the possibility of, um, something similar happening amongst Syriac Christians in terms of inst institutionalization, will give us an incredible insight into, first of all, what makes the Bavli and the stamma of the Bavli different, um, and how it relates to the context in which it, uh, grew up.
So I hope that satisfied some of your interest in the Stam and, and, and what it's happening in its relation to, to context.
BENAY LAPPE: It definitely did fascinating. Thank you. I still have lots of questions, but I wanna give Dan a chance.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, I just, along similar lines, is there, can you say why that project was being undertaken at that time?
Whether it had anything to do with the impending, uh, impending Muslim, uh, takeover of the area, which I've heard have been speculated and, um. So, I mean, that, that's one question I, I actually, in Day Yomi, I think it was yesterday, maybe two days ago, and I think it was Rab who says, you know, has this statement, all of a sudden, it's kind of outta context too that the future of the Torah is to be forgotten, you know, and I kind of wonder whether there's some panic going on. There's some reason why there's some sense of that.
But also is the, the thought process that we think of as Talmudic. You know, this kind of, you know, first of all, like who said what, and this rabbi said, you know, and they're always trying to figure out who said it. And this whole like just convoluted, you know, logic puzzle type of thing. Is that specific to the Talmud? Is that specifically Jewish or is that also related to what was going on in Zoroastrianism and other things?
SHAI SECUNDA: Yeah. Great. So, um, you know, what I described happening in Zoroastrian text and this project of creating a, you know, massive text is very. Part of the reason why it's kind of difficult to make this claim is our evidence is, is complicated.
Most of our evidence comes from after, in fact, the Arab conquests. Um, but a lot of this, um, there's good reason to believe, is describing a textual system that existed well before, um, the Arab conquest and well before the, the Sasanians ever thought that their empire would, uh, would end. Um, there's even evidence in the third century, um, an inscription by this, um, powerful high priest named Kartir, uh, that, um, that this, that the process of creating and reciting and shaping this Dan, this tradition was already, um, an imperial interest.
Um, so, and, and more broadly, uh, also in terms of, um, understanding how the boley came to be, there is a very old tendency that we have as Jews. To assume that things happen because of destruction or impending doom. Um, and this is true to a certain extent, and these arguments have been made not only, you know, in recent scholarship say the rise of, you know, certain forms of Kabbalah, um, uh, you know, being attributed specifically to the Spanish, uh, inquisition. Uh, a famous and important claim of Gershom Scholem, uh, or even to an extent the way, um, some of the, the medieval, uh, commentators look at the process of creating Talmud also, uh, as or mishna even. Uh, Maimonides takes this approach that there was some kind of problem that led to, um, um, the need to, you know, put everything together, uh, to make sure that it's preserved for the follow, you know, future generations.
I, um, am, am generally skeptical of those arguments. And I think specifically when it comes to the Talmud and the Zoroastrian project, and for that matter, you know, uh, Syriac, Christian Scholasticism, I don't think that's what's going on because you need actually a time of flourishing. You need to be able to build these institutions and to keep them going in order to really put together, um, these massive projects.
I mean, the Talmud might seem to uninitiated as a kind of slap dash thing, but for those of us who have had the joy of really spending time with it, this is a text that required enormous communal resources and one would imagine not, you know, not done kind of on the run. That's, I'm not saying that persecuted people cannot make incredible things, um, but often they seem to have a different sort of cast, and I don't feel.
In the Talmud, a sense of impending, uh, change. I certainly don't feel that in the way the Zoroastrian tradition is described in all of its kind of, you know, vastness and intricacy. Um, I think these are projects that were, um, that, that, that reflect, um, means and abilities, uh, of a relatively stable political situation.
BENAY LAPPE: Shai as a queer reader of Talmud, what jumped out at me almost immediately, the first sugya I learned in my first Talmud class in rabbinical school was HaChovel. So this is the passage that, that describes the, um, shift from the Torah's mandate of Eye for an Eye, Tooth for Tooth physical retaliation to a monetary compensation.
Okay. Um, but it seemed obvious to me that what the content, what the surface content was, wasn't the message, it was the process that was used to make a shift on this particular surface content, as an example, the way a case book in a law school would show. And it was very gratifying to me to read in your book that you address this issue of don't mistake the surface content for what's really going on.
If, and I'm may be overstating it, I'm gonna read this line from your book. You say, if there was, “if there ever was a set of texts whose surface meaning should not be allowed to stand alone in scholarly inquiry, these are they,” can you talk more about what you meant there and. Do you think I'm, I'm off or am I onto to something?
SHAI SECUNDA: Definitely. Onto something. And if I remember correctly, that is in my intro, is in my kind of convention section of the book. So I am very grateful that there are readers, careful readers, even if those parts, uh, that one sometimes assumes, will only be read by, you know, your family thanking them, uh, and that sort of thing.
Yes, I mean, I didn't conceive of it in terms of, you know, queer Talmud, but I think that's a, you know, that's a, that's a great way of thinking about my approach to, um, the relationship between what the text seems to say its process, uh, and what's, you know, what's happening in multiple, uh, levels. Um, part of what I meant in that quote was the kind of sweating that we need to do. Schvitzing, to use the Yiddish, um, to wrest meaning, um, from, from the Talmud.
I never thought about it. I'm grateful to you. I never thought about it as something that's parallel to what the rabbis are doing, vis-a-vis Torah, right? That, you know, the Torah is saying one thing and they're saying that can't stand alone. We have to really sweat to find new layers of meaning, uh, new senses. Um, so I'm grateful to you for that, uh, for that insight.
I also think if I understood your, your comment correctly, that, um, a lot of it is really that the process is what's most important. Um, there's a, in fact, right, it's really a performance. Um, it's, it's akin to kind of performance, uh, when we think about. What the Talmud is doing, right? It's not to necessarily get to a specific law, um, it's not necessarily even to get to a specific understanding, but it's to work through via kind of performance, whether textual or even a bodily performance of reciting the text and arguing about the text That's really at the heart of the enterprise.
I have to share a story I have from Peker HaChovel since you shared one with me. One of the best siyyums that I ever attended, um, was, uh, you know, completion of, uh, of a portion of Torah was, um, at a wonderful beit midrash at the Hebrew University student beit midrash called Chavrutah. Um, and I learned with them one year Perek HaChovel
At the end of the learning process, all the students came and they made a nice little party with delicious food, and they brought in a, um, a master of Tai Chi, who had also been learning through the perek and tried to explain to us, and I, I've never actually studied Tai Chi, but I was part of this process, um, tried to explain to us how understanding bodily movement, um, especially the kind of, you know, fine tuned bodily movement that one finds in an art like Tai Chi is essential to understanding this perek. Right?
And he even performed for us different, you know, acts of violence. Um, no one was heard in the process. Um. It totally blew open my understanding of this chapter. Right. Wow. Where, you know, suddenly the texts which were somewhat inert because they were texts were brought alive by someone who I think was tapping into, and, you know, this, this energy that really was already the text by performing these different, you know, um, actions that are described in the chapter.
BENAY LAPPE: I, I love, I love this metaphor of performance, of understanding, uh, the way the Talmud moves as a performance has demonstr. That's, that's fantastic. Thank you.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, thank you so much. I, our, uh, we've reached the end of our hours, but, uh, we certainly have a lot more to, to ask you, so maybe we'll get together again another time.
SHAI SECUNDA: This was so fun. Thank you so much for the opportunity.
DAN LIBENSON: Thank you for, thank you so much for taking the time to be with us and, uh, we'll look forward to seeing you again soon.
SHAI SECUNDA: Okay. Nice to meet you. Thank you. So thank you so much. Okay. See you later.
DAN LIBENSON: Thanks so much for joining our chevruta today! We hope you’ve enjoyed learning with us… and with the Talmud. You can find links to the source sheets for all episodes in the show notes and on our website at oraltalmud.com. Your support helps keep Oral Talmud going. You can find a link on the website to contribute. We’d also love to hear from you! Email us with any questions, comments, or thoughts at hello@oraltalmud.com. Please, share your Oral Talmud with us – we’re so excited to learn from you. The Oral Talmud is a joint project of SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva and Judaism Unbound, two organizations that are dedicated to making Jewish texts and ideas more accessible for everyone. We are especially grateful to Sefaria for an incredible platform that makes the Talmud available to everyone. It’s free at sefaria.org. And we are grateful to SVARA-nik Ezra Furman for composing and performing The Oral Talmud’s musical theme. The Oral Talmud is produced by Joey Taylor, with help from Olivia Devorah Tucker, and with financial support from Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah. Thanks so much for listening–and with that, this has been the Oral Talmud. See ya next time.
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